‘We see him here, we see him there’: poster showing São Paulo’s mayor João Doria on a wall in Mexico City; the fashion for graffiti has caused controversy in Brazil

Cris Faga · NurPhoto · Getty

There was victory in the air at the opening of the Liberty Forum in Porto Alegre this April. The city is known outside Brazil as the first municipality to come under the control of the leftwing Workers’ Party (PT) in 1998 and as birthplace of the World Social Forum, but has also hosted this annual meeting of Brazil’s ultra-liberal right for 30 years; the forum used to be restricted to insiders, but has now turned into a jamboree.

With the 2,600-seat auditorium full throughout the event, the speakers were happy: ‘Neoliberal thought has never figured so prominently in public debate,’ said Helio Beltrão, president of the Mises Institute Brazil, a thinktank that is officially apolitical but follows economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), a major figure in the Austrian School. ‘We got thousands of young people out into the streets to demonstrate against the PT, and drove the left out of power. For the first time, I feel we can win the 2018 presidential election.’

This may not be an idle boast. After 13 years of PT hegemony, a hard right is governing Brazil without being elected. Former vice-president Michel Temer, who became president after Dilma Rousseff was impeached last August, is following the forum’s neoliberal map, with an amendment to the constitution that limits public spending growth to the rate of inflation in the previous year; privatisations; greater flexibility in labour legislation; plans to reform pensions that will deprive many of a pension; and a narrower definition of slave labour, still widespread in Brazil.

This year’s forum was opened by the new mayor of São Paulo, businessman João Doria of the rightwing Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). Doria presented himself as an entrepreneur who works 15 hours a day. His plans included ‘lower taxes, less market regulation and zero restrictions on free enterprise.’ He also promised to privatise as soon as possible those areas of public services still under public management (including parks (...)